Saturday, January 9, 2010

Saturday, May 23, 2009

If you are after a good laugh or even a grin, a smirk, or the slightest sign of amusement, this time you’re not going to get it. In fact, this time around, the closest show of teeth that you’ll get is from an angry snarl, and a livid foaming mouth.

I’ve always believed that humour gets most messages across better than anything else. Time and time again I have seen the most hard- headed people open up to new ideas through the back door of their brain which is usually left wide open to the funny side of an argument. But as hard as I try, and as much as I would like to live up to my funny name, I simply cannot find anything comical about wearing animal fur as a fashion statement. There simply isn’t anything funny about cruelty to animals. There is nothing funny about cruelty in general, but cruelty towards the most vulnerable and unprotected is ghastly and should be punishable by a slow painful death!

Clearly I love animals. In fact, on average I love them more than I love humans. My reasoning is

simple - your average animal is usually nicer than your average human! Having said that, if I found myself completely naked on a sub zero god forsaken island, or frozen in a glacier in the middle of nowhere, I might consider wearing animal fur. But, even under such critical circumstances, I’d only wear the fur of an animal that has had a great life, and whose death was not premature or unduly painful. To cut a long story short, let it be known that if you’re anywhere near me wearing so much as a real fur earring, expect to be pelted with red paint and lectured into your senses or out of my sight.

Just the thought of anyone wearing animal fur as a fashion statement makes my stomach churn, and I have no moral qualms about seriously hurting anyone who does. As open minded as I would like to think that I am, and as much as I would tolerate mostly anything that is not in my back yard, this is something that makes me want to abandon the human species and join the hairy apes. Cruelty is not funny. Fur is for animals. Wearing it is not cool.

Before anyone concludes that I’m some extreme fundamentalist, let me set things straight - I am not a vegan, I’m not even a vegetarian, I am not a tree hugger, and like most of you, I am a capitalist – I like to save money and make money - I also like to look good and spend way too much on clothes and shoes. There have also been a few times when I wore a cat around my neck – a cat that was very much alive and kicking that had decided to curl itself around my neck to keep me warm at night. On other occasions I also wore a horny dog around my leg and went around my business until he was satisfied.

How can anyone in their right mind think that it is ok to kill small fury animals for fashion and vanity? And how could it have taken the most animal conscious country (Britain) up to 2002 to outlaw fur farms? For peace sake - fashion is a luxury, it’s extra, it’s entirely unnecessary for survival, and wearing a coat made from an animal whose skin was ripped off is unacceptable and nauseating. We are not cave-dwelling Neanderthals anymore, we do not need animal fur to keep us warm, so when you’re being tempted to let fashion designers or silly celebrities convince you that you must have the latest chinchilla spread across your shoulders, just have a quick look at how the bunnies scream in agony when they are trapped, kept in hideous conditions, and skinned alive. Yes, they are skinned alive or genitally and anally electrocuted. (check out http://www.peta.org/)

What saddens me is that we seem to be regressing instead of progressing - in the 1980s and 1990s people started to see the light and sales of pelts including mink, fox, chinchilla and rabbit started to go down drastically. Even with idiots like Sue Ellen and Alexis flaunting fur coats all over our living rooms, people had a mind of their own and stood up against this appalling trade. But shockingly, in 2004, the British Fur Trade Association (BFTA) reported that sales of fur in Britain increased by 35%!

All I have to say to fashion designers, editors, actors and anyone remotely promoting the fur industry is to go and genitally electrocute themselves. And, if they are into wild animal furs, I can also arrange for them to be drowned, trapped, clubbed and beaten to death for their skins. Now that would be amusing and I can definitely see a lot of funny there!The coats you see on the catwalks try to portray furs as a symbol of elegance, but the truth is that even if you have just one lonely brain cell, and you knew how the original and rightful owners of these coats met their gruesome deaths, there is no way that you can wear real fur and live with yourself. And please don’t even try to get around your silly argument by saying that you are wearing a second hand, decade-old fur. Even if you’ve purchased a vintage fur from 50 years ago, it still sends the same unacceptable message as a new fur – that it is cool to crush animals’ bones into traps, to stomp on their heads and to snap their necks, or to anally electrocute them for the sake of vanity. Trust me, if you’re that stupid, no fur coat is going to make you look good!